Guillermo Del Toro spills some plot details for CRIMSON PEAK

Guillermo Del Toro is a very busy man, with his Mexican fingers in many different pies (which is a sentence that sounded a lot less dirtier in my head). He’s recently said that he would relook at his Lovecraftian adaptation for At The Moutains of Madness now that he knows Ridley Scott isn’t ripping him off, and his giant mechs vs monsters movie, Pacific Rim, will soon be exploding fanboy pants in a cinema near you.

But next on the list though is Crimson Peak, his take on the classic ghost story, and now we’re finally starting to get some details on what that really means.

Now we knew that the film would be starring Emma Stone (Superbad, The Amazing Spider-Man) and Charlie Hunman (Sons of Anarchy, Pacific Rim) but very little else. Previously we’ve heard Crimson Peak described as “a set-orientated take on a classic ghost story that has been modernised” which would allow Del Toro to “play with the conventions of the genre I know and love, and at the same time subvert the old rules.” All of which honestly just sounds like a bunch of legalese to me. But thanks to Total Film chatting to the man, we now have some solid facts about the story.

“It’s the turn of the century. So it’s at the turn of the century and half of the movie takes place in America, and the other half takes place in a crumbling mansion in Cumbria. And basically it’s a ghost story and gothic romance, trying to subvert the rules of the usual gothic romance. It’s very much… the first half is a love story, then that love story turns darker. And it’s at the same time a ghost story. I’m working at this moment with Lucinda Clarkson who is a really great playwright from the UK. She has the proper degree of perversity and intelligence to turn it into something interesting to watch. It’s sort of a very compelling version of the classic gothic romance, where you have the spookiness and the windswept landscape that dooms the characters, you know?”

So if you were hoping that Stone and Hunman would get down to some spooky Bow-Chick-A-B0w-Woo (Boo-Chick-A-B0o-Woo?) well then it looks like your might be getting your wish.

And if this is as successfull as last year’s The Woman in Black, could we be looking at a shift back towards more traditionally spooky ghost films, instead of the torture porn that saturates the Horror genre lately? That would certainly get my vote.

Last Updated: February 19, 2013